Me, me, me.

I like talking about myself. Hopefully you like talking about me, too. It can be sort of like our common interest. I am almost positive I am closely quoting Summer Roberts right now. Summer and Dr. Roberts mostly just like talking about Summer. Maybe you and I can have a similar relationship, Internet. I'm sure I will have better luck making this relationship work if I stop referencing The O.C., but it is bound to happen from time to time.

This is an important life experience that I've already shared with my Facebook universe. Now I think I'll share it with the three people who read this blog-thing.

One morning a few weeks ago, I was driving home and an ambulance turned into a church in front of me.
Normally, a person should feel sort of sad and think, "Oh, I hope everyone is okay!"
This was not the case with me.
I thought, "Hmm. Someone probably had a heart attack. That's what you get for going to church all the time. Yep, churches have artery-clogging cholesterol-filled potluck dinners for every occasion. Baptisms, weddings, holidays, Wednesdays. Fatty food all the time. Stop going to church. Save your heart."

You see, I've always been sarcastic, cynical, and a little bit bitchy. But deep down, I had an actual heart. At least that's what I thought until this incident. It was pretty eye-opening when I caught myself in the middle of those thoughts.

I felt really bad.
No, I'm lying here. I did not feel that bad. What I really thought was, "Hmm, you're making a really good point, Caroline. I bet it was a heart attack!"

I'm slightly disturbed by my bitchiness.
Nope, lying again. What I'm disturbed about is my acceptance of the fact that I have a heart of stone.
I shouldn't be so okay with the fact that I'm an evil stabby meanie.
Do I have a choice, though?



What would Summer do?

Texas hold 'em (mis)adventures

I don't like games in general. Monopoly? Boring. Flip cup? Just stupid. War? Kill me now. Beer pong? No way in hell. Now you're totally saying, "Wow, Hurricane Caroline must not like anything fun!" That's only slightly true. I'm in a long-term relationship with Trivial Pursuit, and PhotoHunt is the mad notes. But that's all.

My obvious hatred of games aside, I felt that poker was something I needed to know how to play. I will probably never "seriously" play poker (read: poker involving money), but I think it is a game everyone should have some knowledge of.

I recruited a friend to teach me the game. I will refer to him as GT, short for gin and tonic, which would make him quite unhappy. GT thinks that gin and Sprite is a classy beverage that is superior to the traditional gin and tonic. He is wrong, no? GT does, however, know how to play Texas hold 'em and properly slice a lime, so I think we'll continue to be friends.

With a bribe-bottle of Beefeater in tow, I headed to GT's house to expand my knowledge of betting games. Quickly memorizing winning hands? No problem. Statistics has always been my favorite subject, so I had no issue with predicting the probability of getting certain cards.

The trouble began when the actual game play started. There was no money (or clothing) at stake, so it should not have been so frustrating. I was truly convinced that all I needed to do was obtain a Royal Flush and kick ass. (I should mention that I am fully aware that the odds of getting a Royal Flush are something like one in 650,000.) The thing is, I have no idea how to bet. Do you fold? Do you bluff? I'm not a very good actress, so I ended up betting what GT called "penny chips" the entire time.
The game went on for what felt like an eternity. After slowly getting my ass kicked for approximately a million years, I decided to just commit suicide (or what would be considered in a casino to be as sinful as suicide) and go all in on a terrible hand, intentionally losing everything.

All of this being said, I like Texas hold 'em. I want to play more and get better.

I think my real motivation to learn poker is the fact that I'd like to become one of those "poker stereotypes." I'm sure you know what I'm referring to. You leave ESPN on after watching The Big Game and an hour later, you realize your TV is tuned into a poker tournament. There is always a varied and very movie-stereotype-like group of people in the game.
I'm having trouble deciding which stereotype I want to be:

• There's always "The Cowboy" (we're talking Texas hold 'em, after all), but I don't wear hats very well, so this probably won't work.
• "The Asian Business Man" is usually present at a poker tourny. I can't pull this off because I'm definitely not a business man. (Yes, that's the reason. It's not due to the fact that I completely lack Asian heritage.)
• "The Black Man" is already claimed. (GT would be upset if I ruined it for him.)
• "The Mafia Boss" likes to wear a well-tailored suit and tacky (yet expensive) jewelry and is usually quite corpulent. I don't feel like putting any sort of oil in my hair, becoming a man, and gaining a hundred pounds, so this is not an option,
• "The Vixen" is a tempting option, because I am a very vain individual and I feel good when I look better than those around me. However, she is usually (and inexplicably) wearing a floor-length dress. Said dress is often bedazzled. Being "The Vixen" might be too much of a throwback to prom for a wannabe fashionista like myself.
• "The Normal Guy" is somewhat disturbing, because he's so normal. He looks like your dad, your neighbor, or your roommate. He can be of any age or race, but he's just too normal, and it terrifies the other poker players.

(I forgot to mention "The Neck-Brace Man," but he's one-of-a-kind, anyway)

Perhaps I can create a new poker player stereotype. Maybe people will emulate me in the future. This might be my next goal in life. Thoughts?

I like sportz and I don't care who knows

This could easily become a sports blog. It won't, of course, but I do spend an unhealthy portion of my life tracking scores, watching games, and yelling at the television.

I will tell you that I have also spent an unhealthy portion of my life covering up my habit. I haven't always been a sports-crazed lunatic in cute shoes, but I have always enjoyed watching football, basketball, and baseball more than I would have liked to admit. Finally, my addiction to this drug (known on the streets as ESPN and never mentioned in D.A.R.E. class) is out in the open.
Some of my friends are accepting (even encouraging) of this fact. Others would like to stage an intervention and throw me into some sort of six-month rehabilitation facility. My mother, for one, is highly annoyed with me at the moment. She does not appreciate me yapping about how much I would like to punch (insert name of any athlete on an opposing team) in the face.
I really am trying to at least get through March Madness without making too many people mad.

I had been unsure about how and why I am this way, but I think I've gotten to the bottom of it:

My family seemingly never cared about sports. My dad occasionally watched North Carolina State football and basketball games, but never made too much of a fuss about it. I considered this, then remembered a photo of me as a toddler wearing an NC State sweat suit and crying like someone who had just been stabbed in the foot. Naturally, I wanted to look through all the family photos, find this one, and burn it. I was shocked to discover that my sister and I each consistently "owned" these outfits from the ages of infancy to six years old.

See? She is not amused. She is basically saying, "Go away, Dad. If you put me in one more NCSU shirt, I'll graduate from their rival school when I grow up as payback for this!" The pictures only get worse. We look equally (or even more) unhappy in every photo I found. We didn't want to wear jerseys, we wanted to wear princess dresses.


I do not remember this at all, but I feel like it must somehow be the cause of my addiction, and the reason I am not a State fan. As far as overcoming this problem goes, I'm sure there's a 12-step program out there somewhere. I just don't think I'm ready to commit to recovery at the time being.

Blogging is not going to be my ticket to fame.

I decided that I needed to create a blog and become Internet-famous. I am now realizing that this dream will never work out. I don't know html. I pride myself on knowing that it stands for "hypertext markup language," because I love Jeopardy! and acronyms are important, but that is where my knowledge ends. I clearly did not think about this goal before setting it for myself.

Additionally, I don't think I'll gain much support. My friends are going to smash this dream into the ground before it gets a chance to take off. After a paragraph-long rant on Facebook chat about how blogging is headache-inducing and that I was probably going to cry about it, my very dear friend says, "Whoa. You're being pretty dramatic today." This is important, and clearly no one understands. I don't think I'll really cry about it, though.
(Yes, I will.)

Wish me luck.


*Edit: I did cry. Well, I cried Internet tears. Bullet-proof, 24 karat gold Internet tears of a rapper. The conversation with the above mentioned friend continued as follows:

Me: waaaah. (that was me crying like an infant)

Him: how else does one cry?

Me: like a really depressed adult who just curls up in bed and tears dramatically fall from their eyes and they use all their remaining energy to struggle to reach the tissues on the nightstand.

Him: sometimes it's hard to get those tissues when you're looking at the screen and only have one hand free

See what I mean? I'm mourning the death of my blogging career, and my so-called friends ruin my dramatic moment by making references to masturbation.